GeneralThis forum is for non-technical general discussion which can include both Linux and non-Linux topics. Have fun!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I like IceWM's config. Fluxbox/Blackbox and WindowMaker are good too. Enlightenment is a whole different monster in that everything you can imagine is configurable.
There is a LinuxAnswer here for IceWM, and you can probably find stuff on the official site www.icewm.org. It optionally needs imlib for expanded image support, but you probably have that installed already. WindowMaker has a configuration app.
I don't know enough about the others, but they probably have info on their official sites as well.
Reckon it depends on how much tinkering you want to do ;-) They all can basically be controlled via config files which are generally all either well commented, documented or self-explanatory.There's also a number of threads covering quite a few of those WM's on here discussing setting up various options + settings. The *boxes are fairly straightforward to configure and can look stunning, so maybe starting off with one of them - easy to install + configure and gives you a taste for hacking themes, menus, icons, etc. then look at moving onto something more indepth like enlightenment...
Fluxbox is pretty easy, there is an app floating around called fluxconf which is a bit of a GUI but the files are pretty easy to understand, editing by hand isn't difficult at all. Fvwm is like writing your own window manager in it's config files, the result is amazingly powerful and configurable but very difficult to boot. Openbox is pretty cool but it's lack of a taskbar can be disappointing. Pypanel is a good choice to use... I've used E17 a bit, not E16 at all. E17 is pretty simple too, it's has some nice GUI tools to configure more stuff but if not, just check out the --help for whatever app you want to change, the E team tend to cram a lot of info into --help, I haven't had to read a man page for that WM yet
out of your list , i only actually use blackbox , IceWM and xfce4 , if going for the easiest configuration , i think it would be blackbox and their related , its only got two or three files to configure , i usually configure the menu config file in an editor , same goes to menu config file for xfce4 and IceWM , for window-manager styles configurations in xfce4 and blackbox , you can mostly do it directly from the builtin popup-menu , no need to hand-config them , as for IceWM , its ok to hand-config many of the options but their config files , directories and images tend to spread out a bit ...
apart from your list , i would also like to mention ROX , its a good one , you usually run rox with another wm , i run ROX with IceWM , can get the best out of both but still not resource hungry , ROX can give you the desktop icons and a nice top-panel , i only read wm documentations for ROX cause it uses it own ways to handle applications which are specified to ROX itself , the documantation is a very good one , just one long page of html ...
havent been updating to their latest version for quite some time , hope the above still stand true enough ...
I only use blackbox now but I can vouch all the *boxes are easy to configure and use. In blackbox's case there are three files to configure, the style file, menu file and user's settings file (~/.blackboxrc).
Rox isn't a window manager, its a file manager and also controls desktop icons and a few other things, same sort of thing as nautilus is. Whilst people are starting to mention their favourite file managers I will do the same: I find Xfe is an excellent file manager, it basically has two layouts, the traditional two pane setup like mc and the Windows Explorer type view, one window with a file tree
I've never had that happen to me before, the only thing I've found is that it can seem as though its crashed when opening a folder that contains many files/subfolders when in fact it just isn't accepting user input and it won't refresh the window so you get white spots where other windows have been put on top, but within a few seconds/minutes it starts responding again
Maybe you have an older version? I don't know its history very well, I have only been using it since version 0.80
its raining right now down here , i like this kind of weather ...
i have to mention that i was once being introduced by a member to blackbox for windows together with other usual bb stuffs , they are good , now i normally use that when going into windows , their config files are very similar to the linux ones , if you feel like trying it , go ahead and try it , its hilarious but fun and good ...
talking about ROX , i think ROX is a very unique wm , i mean you can have lots of wm installed on your machine , infact most of them in thorn168's list i guess , but can let them be used under ROX , where you just have to select whatever wm that you prefer at that moment from a drop-down menu in ROX "desktop option menu" and restart ROX itself , i mean those wm that doesnt usually come with desktop icons or some "convenient" panels , and although i hardly use ROX's filemanager but i have to say that its filemanager is fast enough , just very few seconds of "lock-up" for those very "deep" directories , can't feel much of a problem ...
when i want to open lots of files at the sametime , like many big image files with gimp or lots of text files in seperate windows and i also need to play something with xmms at the sametime , i tend to use blackbox , for me blackbox is very thin and clean ...
also not to forget about those wm that can run with very very little memory , one of them comes with a "text-based" filemanager and a desktop popup menu , they are very fast ...
I use Fluxbox. It's simple to run programs when you start x11; you just add them to Flux's startup file. It's simple to add programs to the menu; you just add them to the menu file. And I've installed rox to make things a bit easier when I'm feeling gooey. Fluxbox is helping to ween me onto the terminal. Haven't had a problem yet as a newbie.
yup ... to think about it ... blackbox , fluxhbox(although i personaly havent try it) and icewm pretty much belong to the same category while xfce belongs to it own class(probably together with ohers more light-weight "flashy" wm) ... and until now i'm still thinking that this rox is really one of it kind and its very good at doing what it suppose to do , at least from the view-point of someone(me) who have been all the while just scratches the surface of *nix ...
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.